In India

Prepare for arrival...

We made it to India safe and sound. The 15 hour flight from San Francisco to Dubai non-stop was brutal. We have taken so many short flight recently that it was hard to get in the mindset of just how long the flight would be. At around seven hours into the flight, I felt the engines cut back and a slight descent and I thought ‘Oh good! We’re about to land!’, only to realize that we had another 8 hours to go! We barely slept so we got to experience just about every painful minute of that 15 hours. After a short few hours in Dubai, it was back on the plane for the four hour flight to Trivandrum. It was dark when were where in Dubai, so didn’t even get to see the new tallest building in the world.

Many of you know that I have developed an irrational fear of flying over the past few years or so. I have traveled all around the world since I was in my early twenties, but for some reason this fear came out of nowhere and eventually came to a crisis point last year. I could barely finish the second of a two leg flight. Since then, I’ve asked for prayer from friends every time I fly. As one can imagine, I was not particularly looking forward to the 20+ hours of flying ahead of us. I asked for prayer from as many people as I could, and God really came through! I did have moments of fear, but not the crushing terror that I’ve felt in the past, so THANK YOU to those who were praying.

During those fearful moments, I started to think of the many people in the bible, particularly in the Old Testament, who must have faced incredible fear. The obvious one is David as he stood before Goliath, but I thought of those like Gideon who had to go to battle against great odds and the prophets who faced horrible circumstances like being kept in a muddy well, or sawed in half. I can’t image how terrifying it would be waking up in the morning (assuming you slept) that hey, today is the day that you get sawed in half! I wanted to impart some wise words about fear, but in retrospect I really haven’t any. My experience though, is that it forces me to draw right up to God’s feet and beg for peace. I haven’t had waves of peace flow over me, but I have had just enough to back me away from the edge. Perhaps that’s God way of keeping me dependant on Him.

We arrived at 3:30 am in Trivandrum and didn’t reach the apartment until about 5am. We all had a short nap and each had the creeping feeling of ‘Oh my gosh, what have we done!’ when it all set in. Hailey was very upset and crying at one point, and I started to feel that panic of ‘how am I going to do this for 8 months’ set in. I had a real lesson in spiritual warfare last year, and in hindsight I realized that much of my struggles the last time we were here were attacks from the enemy in this land that he has such a stronghold in. I had planned to anoint the apartment when we first got here, but I was too tired. Literally with each passing minute I could tell that it could not wait. We got up and went straight to it, and sure enough, we all felt much, much better a short time later. So far, we are all doing really well. Last night (Monday night) was the first time we’ve had any real sleep for about 48 hours. The girls did amazingly well for such little sleep. Even though they were exhausted on Monday, they were eager to start homeschooling. Crazy! I wasn’t ready and fortunately Adam stayed home that day so we could go shopping for supplies.

“Food, glorious food…”

I say ‘shopping’, but it was more like foraging. My close friends know how food was a major issue the last time we were here, and from the looks of it, things have not changed much. The one little store in town that is anywhere near being westernized has next to nothing in terms of actual food. Its mostly just ingredients like spices. I was only able to get some fruit, some bread, some jelly, peanut butter (they actually had Skippy crunchy!), rice, and dried beans. I looked in the cart and asked Adam “Okay, what do I make for dinner?” Rice and beans are fine for tonight, but what about the next 210 days? The last time we were here, the store sold these packets of ready-made Indian food that you could add the canned cheese cubes to. Not so this time. So far we’ve lived on peanut butter and jelly and roman noodles for lunch. We tried ordering food for delivery from one of the many little local restaurants that we found menus for here in the apartment, but each place we called could not understand English. Even if we could have communicated the order, forget trying to explain where we lived or how to get there! We ended up having the apartment manager order for us. Adam went to work today, and it looks like his work is going to try to find a way to make ordering food easier, like having a go-between at his work order if we text the order and restaurant to them. That would be pretty cool, but the girls would still have some major adjusting to do to the local food. They love northern India food, but not so much southern.

Thank you again friends for all of your prayers for us! We’d love your continues prayer support!